Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

It'll be a huge bureaucracy of amalgamated entities. The TSA will be there if you want to sign into PSN (take off your shoes, all electronics are subject to scanning, please use the full body scanner provided with your PS3, and all liquids must fit in a plastic baggie and contained in 1oz or smaller containers). Oh, and you may be randomly selected for an enhanced screening where your PS3 will now scan your computers and hard drives for anything possibly related to hacking. Linux, vi, emacs counts.

There's a CIA division who will use your EyeToy to spy on any possible deviancy you may show with regards to the the PS3. Anything other than "Insert Money", "Insert Blu-ray" or "Sony Approved Accessories Only" counts.

Then there's the FBI division who'll monitor everything done on PSN - anyone who possibly cheats or sends/speaks of anything related to security, you're on the watchlist.

Don't worry, your credit card numbers are *safe*! See all the pain we make customers go through?

I just tried to continue POP (SOT) and it said I need an Eye Toy, confused as to why I need an Eye Toy for the game which never needed an Eye Toy, I ran to Fry's and got one, hooked it up but it won't play until it scanned me bare naked. Also I wasn't allowed to keep my liter bottle of Coke next to me.

But it's not about law enforcement. It's about politics and just like you can't change people politically by mass arrests, you can't threaten to arrest hackers and expect that to stop an organization like Anonymous. These organizations see Sony as an existential threat.

You cannot solve a political problem with law enforcement. Sony if they were smart would hire some of the hackers in the hacker community. Adopt a new culture which accepts and embraces the hacker community, and over time their stock will rise in the hacker community and then they could have better security by working with their hacker community ties. The problem is they are going entirely authoritarian, which is exactly the wrong direction to go politically if they want any sort of political cover or to not be seen as the most evil. I mean to hire the head of some government agency, a guy who if you look at his resume and record seems to have absolutely no experience with the hacker community, the gaming community, nothing whatsoever. He went to school for computer science and then went to Yale of all possible schools for law.

What is this man's backround? What are his political beliefs? Is he just another law and order government robot type who wants to make arrests and solve crimes? If that's all he is, he's exactly the wrong sort of person. What is his technical skill level? Does he have any skill outside of the classroom? Once again the government types usually think anything can be learned in the classroom setting, and that this setting can make up for the lack of actual experience in the hacking community. I'm talking about the IRC channels, the knowledge of the various groups, but most importantly knowing who is what.

I will assume since this guy headed a government agency that he either would know the hacker community inside out or he should have a connection to someone who does. The problem is if the only thing he plans to do is outlaw their activities and then find ways to arrest them, this isn't going to be very popular. More lawsuits? More arrests? More busts? That is more potential talent that goes to waste sitting in prison or in jail.

Sony has a cultural problem. Sony as a corporation has an authoritarian culture. A culture where Sony must have absolute control over everything in order to make a profit. This culture has to change, and it's more important to change this culture than to simply arrest all the anti-authoritarian hackers who don't share that culture. It's also more efficient to hire some of these hackers than to just arrest. And of course the guy they choose to solve all their problems at least from his backround and resume, looks to be another authoritarian type.

I can hope that he's different but given Sony's history, and given his resume, he's exactly the sort of character that Anonymous is going to gobble up. This could actually cause Sony to get attacked more frequently. Sony likely was thinking that this guy has connections to the feds, has at least some backround in computer science, and has a law degree from Yale with plenty of experience working for X amount of companies. This is all well and good but if this guy were serious, and were a part of the community, he would be giving an interview with Slashdot.

They're buying political cover. This man is showing up not to make them secure, but to make sure that they comply with all applicable Federal laws regarding data privacy. If they get hacked again, they will have legal cover against being sued because they will have implemented all of the relevant preventative measures that will then have been signed off by auditors, and Sony will be allowed to say, "We did our due diligence."

The hire has zero to do with addressing the underlying problems and everything to do with mitigating the fallout from the inevitable future breaches.

I'm not so sure about that. They're buying a political insider; who's to say that they don't intend to apply his knowledge offensively? Who knows better than a DHS employee about how to bypass the regular legal system by abusing poorly-designed laws intended to be used against intenational terrorists? If Sony wants to get LulzSec declared a terrorist cell, they've bought the right man.

If you're thinking along those lines, then consider this. Sony is being used by the United States government as a puppet to go after LulzSec. They put their man, the former DHS employee, at Sony so that they have an insider on the front lines. Sony is just a casualty in the war. They have nothing to gain by actively going after LulzSec and everything to lose. On the other hand, the United States government might want to nip LulzSec in the bud.

We don't live in such a police state that they can simply go after people without cause. They would need a pawn like Sony. Sony has suffered "damages" due to LulzSec and therefore Sony can engage the Department of Justice to bring down the hammer on LulzSec.

I don't agree with that line of thinking, but if that is what was going on, it would be happening along those lines.

If you're thinking along those lines, then consider this. Sony is being used by the United States government as a puppet to go after LulzSec. They put their man, the former DHS employee, at Sony so that they have an insider on the front lines. Sony is just a casualty in the war. They have nothing to gain by actively going after LulzSec and everything to lose. On the other hand, the United States government might want to nip LulzSec in the bud.

We don't live in such a police state that they can simply go after people without cause. They would need a pawn like Sony. Sony has suffered "damages" due to LulzSec and therefore Sony can engage the Department of Justice to bring down the hammer on LulzSec.

I don't agree with that line of thinking, but if that is what was going on, it would be happening along those lines.

That's fine but who says LulzSec are Americans? What are American law enforcement types supposed to do if LulzSec is spread around the globe? My best information indicates they are mostly located in the UK, but once again what is the FBI going to do? Extraordinary rendition? And if LulzSec has any skill at all they'll be behind proxies making it even harder to track them down. Once again what is the FBI supposed to do?

But I do think your theory makes logical sense. It does seem like Sony is becoming a puppet of the US Government to go after Lulz Sec. I just wish they weren't so damn obvious about it. They couldn't pick a more hated company.

They could do the same thing that they do with the War on Drugs. They might either liaison with other intelligence agencies in the target country, or they will just work out of the embassy like the DEA does in Colombia.

They could do the same thing that they do with the War on Drugs. They might either liaison with other intelligence agencies in the target country, or they will just work out of the embassy like the DEA does in Colombia.

What does that mean for citizens, for human rights, civil rights, or just our rights online in general?

"...Sony if they were smart would hire some of the hackers in the hacker community. Adopt a new culture which accepts and embraces the hacker community, and over time their stock will rise in the hacker community and then they could have better security by working with their hacker community ties...."

hmmmm - so if a thief breaks into my home what I should do, by your logic, is build an addition on to my house and invite him to move in and several of his loser buddies over for tea so we can chat about life and all things illegal with the goal of me becoming friendly with him, his lifestyle, his friends and the illegal counterculture he resides in. Because the real problem and the real reason he broke into my home and stole all my shit is because I'm the asshole who his breaking down society and he and his friends lives with my aspirations of bringing products to market and having other people purchase them at a fair market price so that I can make a living and my customers can use their money to provide themselves some entertainment to hopefully escape the real world for a few hours. Oh but I don't really want this because by befriending this ass clown and letting him bend me over and do me dirty from behind I will somehow gain the upper hand over him and be able to one day put an end to his need to break in my house and steal my stuff and we will sing Kum Bah Yah together and share a good cry just before I put him in the paddy wagon and they wheel my new best friend and all of his cohorts down to the local prison to break rocks for the next 20 years. As they drive off he'll drop wave as I run behind the van just to get a final glimpse of my new best friend that I conned into letting me get close enough to befriend just so I could stop him from breaking into my place.....

You know what - I think I'll pass on befriending illegal behavior and just put their asses in jail and make them read the laws that I and the majority of the world follow everyday. That way, when he gets out, after having several years to think about why HE was the criminal and HE deserved the time HE served then maybe he'll follow the right path. The path that normal people follow - learn the rules, follow the rules, figure out how to do something you like and get paid for it and maybe he'll build a company that is able to compete with mine and maybe even overtake mine one day - the right way! Can't be done you say???? Well maybe - maybe not but as long he wants to go the criminal route - then you get what the criminal has coming. And for those that think going the straight and narrow route never works then there is the story of IBM and a man named Bill Gates. Being a shrewd businessman and a pretty smart developer he built a product and a company that dethroned them - the legal way. Then there's Mark Zuckerberg who could easily have been a hacker but chose to develop a product and take it to market and guess what, his product was better than the reigning king at the time - MySpace, and thus the rest is history. The world and history is filled with these types of stories. People and companies and communities who choose to follow the rules and work the system and you know what - it works. I am so sick of hearing people bitch and complain about companies, products, governments, and other people who have somehow managed to make a name for themselves or build up a company or rise up in rank higher than others as if they are somehow gaming the rest of us. All that is at its core is envy and jealousy. You know what, the hip-hop community has it right. Haters gonna hate cause that just what haters do. You see your neighbor driving a better car and rather than work harder and smarter to get one yourself, you snicker and talk shit about them behind their back and get other to think like you think. Fuck that - get your own shit so that others can hate on you. You see the CEOs making more money than you and the envy begins rather than figuring out what it is they have done in life that made them a CEO so you can become one too.

>hmmmm - so if a thief breaks into my home what I should do, by your logic, is build an addition on to my house and invite him to move in and several of his loser buddies over for tea so we can chat about life and all things illegal with the goal of me becoming friendly with him, his lifestyle, his friends and the illegal counterculture he resides in. Because the real problem and the real reason he broke into my home and stole all my shit is because I'm the asshole who his breaking down society and he and his friends lives with my aspirations of bringing products to market and having other people purchase them at a fair market price so that I can make a living and my customers can use their money to provide themselves some entertainment to hopefully escape the real world for a few hours.

If you were once a thief, and 10 or 20 years later you're in a position to help the next person so they don't have to do what you did, but instead you decide to say screw em, throw em all in jail, then you'd be like Sony and some of these corporations. Everyone started out as part of the counter culture. Whether you're talking about Steve Jobs who started out as a hippy, trying to invent the first personal computer, or Bill Gates trying to put Windows in every home, all of these people were doing the same stuff. You think people who work for Sony never used pirated software before they could afford it? Never downloaded illegal music? Never experimented with computers as a teenager? But now they want to criminalize the next generation of teenagers who probably will make the same dumbass mistakes they made as part of growing up?

I see this attitude as the attitude of hypocrites. The sort of person who smoked weed in college back when it was still somewhat legal, but they support throwing people in prison to get butt raped now that it's illegal. These sorts of people are selling out to try to impress people who either don't exist (people who never break laws or protest), or who exist but are from a completely different culture from mainstream society. What I'm saying is this attitude caters to the elite few who didn't protest Vietnam in the 60s, who didn't used pirated software in the 80s and 90s, who didn't download music in college, these people now who want to act holy and righteous but who did the same stuff or perhaps much worse when they were young, these are the sort of people who would be the former thief who wants to now put the thieves to death.

I'm saying this behavior from young people using computers to do this sort of stuff is no different than what young people do every generation. They politically protest using whatever means they have available to them. Sony is fighting a political battle with law enforcement to protect their profits. I wouldn't have a problem if Sony softened their political stance, but they feel a need to try to tell entire communities what is or isn't moral, or lecture people on ethics of copyright, while they lock down their hardware and software, using closed source schemes, hidden rootkits into our computers, they don't care about the actual impact of their policies on the future, on technology, on human rights, on liberty, they simply set their politics according to what makes them more profitable.

They are no better than oil companies who fund climate change denials. They are the exact same sort of people. Why would you defend Sony? They are like the climate change deniers, they'll destroy the environment to maintain their profits because they don't care about the internet, about community, about human rights, about anything other than profits and the worst thing about their policies, they'd make just as much profits if they switched their political stance, only their profits wouldn't be as damaging to human rights or to the communities.

Sony is choosing to be a bad corporate citizen and hide behind law enforcement. I'm sure oil companies would also like to do the same thing, and say climate change promoters are harming their profits

I believe what you are looking for is called rampant incompetence. With this new hire Sony will be able to show what true ineptness looks like while making all the fraud and corruption in D.C. look like child's play.

Sony is picking the sort of guy who wont know what hes doing, who seems to have no ties to the hacker community, who graduated from Yale so he's going to seem like another elitist. If you look at who he has worked for, he's connected to governments and law enforcement which goes to show what Sony's priorities are.

Sony should be hiring from within the hacker community. Hiring this guy wont accomplish a damn thing, while this guy might know about the community from the big brother pro government perspective it's very unlikely he will actually understand the community from the perspective of someone who was actually a part of it.

Sony and companies in this position need to start hiring some of these hackers. Look at the situation, you have thousands of young talented hackers. As the unemployment rate rises, they'll be easily recruited or much more likely to join organizations like Anonymous.The best thing Sony could do is hire some of these people, the policy of arresting hackers is dumb. It's like arresting amateur scientists, or arresting mathematicians. The fact that they selected this guy shows me they are focused on arresting them and are going to treat it as a low enforcement problem rather than as a technical and cultural problem.

Sony's problems are technical and cultural. Technical because they design their products in a way so they can only make money with absolute control over how the products are used but then they don't even know how to maintain that control technologically, and second they typically take stances which go against the wishes of millions of people in the hacker community, the gaming community, etc. They simply don't care at all about the customer, the fan, the hacker, the people who buy their products. This lack of respect for the culture of those who buy the product is the main part of the problem.

And this new guy they hired does not seem to come from the sort of backround that most gamers, hackers, or fans come from. He's a hyper connected lawyer who happens to know computer science. When they should have found someone who knows computer science and who happens to understand the law, with connections to the hacker community as well as to the government. This guy is going to be seen as an outsider, a government suit and the hackers are going to attack Sony harder.

I would think most the hacking community would be potentially great at the details, but pretty mediocre at setting the general policies and running the department. This is essentially an administrative position. While I'm sure there are hackers out there that can do both the grunt work and admin work, most just aren't.

The problem with this guy is I don't think he really gets the details. I don't know enough about him to judge him completely, but his resume seems no better than the last guy they had. I don't see how this guy is special or different. Yes it's an administrative position, but there are plenty of hackers who also have been or are in administrative positions. Look at some of the other companies out there, and you'll see that some of these companies (especially the smaller companies) are actually run by hackers.

Look at Slashdot and you see many different people giving various interviews. You see some familiar names. Look at this guy, and the only time we ever heard of him is associated with Anonymous and honestly it looked like they pushed the guy out.

Now we find out he's working for Sony? It makes Sony into big brother. In my opinion it was a terrible move. I know they needed someone with some government connections so I understand why they hired him, I just don't have any faith in Sony's decision making or hiring practices. They tend to make a lot of dumb political authoritarian type decisions which might look good on paper but never actually get anything accomplished.

Somehow I doubt this guy will be any better than what Sony had, and clearly Sony's policies and admin were broken before. I think they hired Reitinger more to look like they were doing something than anything else.

Chief Information Security Officer is a manger job not a tech job while tech skills may help a hackers is better used at a more hands on level.

I know what the job is. But Sony is a tech company. How are you going to be a Chief Information Security Officer at Sony and not have tech skills? I'm not saying this guy doesn't have tech skills, I'm just saying he seems to be focused on law and that's not going to help him deal with some of the type of problems which can only be solved technologically.

If he's the guy in charge, and we are using Microsoft as his gauge, once again he's associated with all the wrong companies in my view. It's nothing against the guy, he might know what he's doing.

This guy was hired to run their security. Hiring a hacker will be helpful for understanding your attackers, but a hacker will understand the corporate culture about as much as Mr Reitinger will understand the gamer/hacker/fan community. Hire former hackers a soldiers in your security arsenal but generals need to be able to survive the corporate ranks.

This guy was hired to run their security. Hiring a hacker will be helpful for understanding your attackers, but a hacker will understand the corporate culture about as much as Mr Reitinger will understand the gamer/hacker/fan community. Hire former hackers a soldiers in your security arsenal but generals need to be able to survive the corporate ranks.

Corporate culture is what is causing Sony to be targeted. Sony is the target of hackers because their culture is so messed up, so authoritarian, that most hackers find it completely unacceptable and they try to spread their culture through their products with lockins, lock downs, and all kinds of bs. It's that culture which I advocate should be changed in order to save Sony.

Because if they keep their authoritarian corporate culture, sure they can hire this guy who might understand that culture but then they run the risk of not understanding the hacker culture or wider internet culture in general which is the source of all their problems. They need to hire a sociologist or an anthropologist because they just have not been able to adapt to the internet age at all.

The first time your Hypothetical Hacker gets rubbed the wrong way by corporate he'll torch Sony's security from the inside out. Sony's corporate culture may be antiquated but corporations are the antithesis of the hacker mentality. Sony doesn't want to change their ways - they just don't want to be p0wn'd on a regualr and continuing basis.

The first time your Hypothetical Hacker gets rubbed the wrong way by corporate he'll torch Sony's security from the inside out. Sony's corporate culture may be antiquated but corporations are the antithesis of the hacker mentality. Sony doesn't want to change their ways - they just don't want to be p0wn'd on a regualr and continuing basis.

That's just not true at all. Not every hacker is like that. That's like saying every programmer on your development team, if you just piss the wrong one off he could write a virus and fuck the system up. Sure that's possible but that's why you don't hire just any random hacker, you hire the ones who are psychologically stable. If someone gets mad and sabotages the company that is because they are psychologically unstable, just like that guy who brought a gun to work and shot everyone up, that could happen too but that doesn't mean we should stop hiring.

If necessary, they should give a psychological exam or read the guys history to make sure he's not the sort of person to do that. But he also should have in his history something which can connect him to the community. Maybe he was a white hat for example, or maybe he contributed to some open source projects or started one, or maybe he hosted a website. No one is advocating that you hire the irresponsible black hat into the top management position.

Sony already has a Senior Executive (that is a hacker) working for them. Interestingly enough, his division actually took security seriously and was not breached. He's Senior Director of Sony PlayStation Worldwide Studios and in his free time runs that DefCon Network.

People don't "join organizations like Anonymous" because of high unemployment. Pedantic crap about "joining" Anon aside, everyone they've busted has been some 20 year old kid living in their mom's basement. None of them were the sort Sony would (or even should) recruit to handle critical security arrangements. This isn't the mid-90's anymore. People do want talented people, but they also want someone that can act like an adult, with responsibility and accountability. As well they should.

That said, this guy was actually a great choice, given the purpose. Of course things at Sony are going to be just as broken, or at best will end up being corrected by talented people well below his pay grade. But this was a political hire to please stakeholders in Sony, for which he's perfect.

high unemployment means a lot of free time. A lot skill, a lot of of free time, a lot of anger, equals a lot more hackers.

This is just common sense. If Sony doesn't hire them then Sony has to hire people to stop them which costs as much or perhaps even more money in the long term. Basically they can work with the community, hire some hackers as bug tests, pen testers, game testers, or whatever. Or they can not hire them in which case they'll do all the same stuff anyway just not for Sony.

The connection I'm making is that politics, high unemployment, and other facts are what is behind the formation of groups like Anonymous. These groups don't form in a vacuum. They form because people of a certain cultural group feel either oppressed or they feel there is no opportunity, or they feel their culture is completely disrespected. Sony contributes to this environment and attitude and does absolutely nothing to change it. If it's true that thousands or millions of hackers are sitting jobless in their parents basement, and if thousands of them decide to get involved in hacktivism, Sony with their CDrom root kits, MPAA/RIAA lawsuits, and other BS is literally attracting all the anger directly at them. It's their disrespect for the hacker culture that causes them to be attacked. Even if they never hired any of them, if they respected the culture, contributed code back via GPL for example, or stopped trying to change laws to arrest these people or harass the community, they wouldn't have so many hackers gunning for them.

You want a hacker to run security? That's just stupid. You want a manager who knows how to hire people who have the right skill set to protect a network. And the whole concept of hiring hackers is a bit naive. Hacking in to Sony is fun. Protecting Sony from hackers on a day to day business is hard work. Of course, a hacker doesn't need to hack once they have internal access...so not too brilliant there either. There are security professionals out there who are equipped with the knowledge of how to hack in to and protect systems. Hiring hackers is one of those things that sounds good to the masses...like lower taxes...but there is more to it than just that.

You want a hacker to run security? That's just stupid. You want a manager who knows how to hire people who have the right skill set to protect a network. And the whole concept of hiring hackers is a bit naive. Hacking in to Sony is fun. Protecting Sony from hackers on a day to day business is hard work. Of course, a hacker doesn't need to hack once they have internal access...so not too brilliant there either. There are security professionals out there who are equipped with the knowledge of how to hack in to and protect systems. Hiring hackers is one of those things that sounds good to the masses...like lower taxes...but there is more to it than just that.

You need a hacker AND a manager. We've seen how well it works to just hire a manager who knows nothing about the hacker community. The manager has to set good policies, and to do that the manager has to at least understand the nature of his attackers and I doubt this manager does. Sure if Sony hires hackers and they give good advice to the manager that could help but the problem Sony has had for a long time is Sony is always slow to change, resistant to change, and slow to adapt. They simply haven't been able to get out of the 1980s walkman era thinking.

Aside from the Law degree he got from Yale, which could prove he's an elitist (but at least not a complete idiot). He also graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degree.

So at least, he comes from a technical background if nothing else, so it's not all bad.

First off hiring criminals to fight crime is stupid, as much as the criminals might think it's a great idea. Makes good TV, and lousy reality. So what if they can close the security holes, they are the types that will help you secure all your data, while they make a few persona copies and post your internal memos onto wikileaks?

Secondly You refer to him as a hyper connected lawyer? Did you read the article, or google him?? He's an computer science and electrical engineering guy. A VERY appropriate resume for the job.

First off hiring criminals to fight crime is stupid, as much as the criminals might think it's a great idea. Makes good TV, and lousy reality. So what if they can close the security holes, they are the types that will help you secure all your data, while they make a few persona copies and post your internal memos onto wikileaks?

Secondly You refer to him as a hyper connected lawyer? Did you read the article, or google him?? He's an computer science and electrical engineering guy. A VERY appropriate resume for the job.

The role of a CIO should not be to fight crime. You are making exactly the point and your thinking is the exact problem.Sony's job is to maximize profits for Sony, not fight cyber crime. Fighting crime and going political is what got them into this mess in the first place.

As far as hackers all being criminals, no one said hire the hackers who have been convicted of a crime. White hats and hackers who haven't been convicted of a crime like for instance Richard Stallman (not saying he would want the job), is an example of what I mean. It's a myth that all hackers are criminals, or that all corporations exist primary to fight crime. It's exactly your thinking that has Sony as the #1 target for criminal hackers, because they all know Sony is the arm of the most fascist elements of the US government, and that Sony is more focused on fighting crime than on making profits.

U.S. law enforcement depends on its ability to search a suspect's computers to prosecute all kinds of crimes from terrorism to drug trafficking, child pornography, and fraud, Reitinger said at the conference, sponsored by the Smart Card Forum.

There's no worse feeling for a law enforcement official, Reitinger said, than finding that a confiscated computer is full of documents that have been sealed up by strong encryption.

The problem with this approach is it has a negative impact on the community itself. It's impact could mean the criminalization of the gaming community. This attitude is very similar to the war on drugs, it's a cultural disagreement with one side having and flexing political connections to strong arm the other side. What is or isn't criminal is determined by people at Sony who have no connection to the community and who don't care about the culture. Reitinger is a law enforcer, and he's good at fighting crime, but this isn't a problem which will be solved by simply arresting a bunch of people.

Just like drug dealing didn't stop after all those arrests, neither will file sharing, or hacking, or anything else. The difference here is hacking is mostly a political crime, at least the sort of hacking that affects Sony. If we remove politics from the equation then everyone can agree that the hackers are the bad guy, the problem with Sony is Sony has become the bully, and the bad guy to the customers (the community) as much as the hackers have and thats the problem I'm talking about addressing.

Sony ultimately is a technology company not a crime fighting company. If they want to become a copyright crime fighting company they can go ahead, but their political positions and take no prisoners crime fighting mentality has led to them suing file sharers, tinkerers and others who are punished merely for finding bugs in their system or their business model. And rather than change their business model or come up with a different solution, such as how Google would do or Microsoft would do, instead they sue and arrest, creating the most political environment possible and dividing the gaming, hacker, and other communities in such a way that when they do get hacked their own customers cheer the hackers. This is the essence of their problem.

If they needed a law enforcement guy, did they have to get the head of the DHS? Out of every guy they could have picked it had to be a guy coming from the DHS? I'm sure there were other guys who could have done the job but who didn't have that kind of political baggage.

Actually, why would they want to hire a criminal? An act of appeasement? Maybe they should hire someone who has put his fair share of hackers (actually, I mean crackers) in jail? You don't have to be one to think like one.

All hackers are criminals? All computer users are criminals? Who isn't some sort of criminal? The difference among people is not all hackers are convicted criminals and no one is saying to hire a convicted criminal.

No one is saying hire Kevin Mitnick to head Sony. There are plenty of hackers who aren't convicted criminals to hire. When I'm saying hacker I'm talking about people who believe in certain beliefs on free speech, fair use, etc. I'm thinking the Free Software movement, not the Anti-Sec movement. The guy they put in place has no connection to the Free Software movement or Open Source Community or Slashdot or the gaming community or any community other than deep government law enforcement type stuff. How would this guy even be able to relate to these communities if he's not a member of any of them?

It has nothing to do with being a criminal, it has to do with actually having an appreciation for or love for technology. It's the politics and principles that got Sony into this mess and only a readjustment of their internal politics and principles will get them out because most of the people hacking them targeted them for political reasons. They weren't targeted by "criminals", they were targeted by hacktivists, which means these hacktivists on some level care more about the community than Sony does and that is the source of the problem.

Sony hates the community, doesn't understand any of the principles the hacktivists claim to abide by, probably couldn't even attempt to have any sort of diplomacy. The fact that you call it appeasement proves my point. It's important to have respect for the community your business is serving and Sony has none. Sony released a rootkit to hack their own customers, and has put themselves into an indefensible position. Now they want to hire a government lackey, and attempt to use the law and lawyers, once again Sony does not care about gamers, hackers, consumers or fans and merely wants to leech all the talent, all the money, all the power away, from every community.

Hackers don't want to give up their ability to tinker with the hardware they buy. That is a fundamental right to the hacker community. Gamers don't like the way Sony does business either, considering Sony didn't value their privacy at all but spends a fortune on DRM schemes. Fans of music don't like Sony because Sony tried to rootkit them using the albums. In my opinion Sony is doing everything wrong.

Apple did a lot wrong but Apple was smart enough to court their communities. That is why Apple is in a better position than Sony. They might not support Open Source but they switched to FreeBSD, they released code back into the community and did not seem like a complete leech. Sony has never given back. And it appears Sony is incapable of change even when it's in their economic self interest.

This move only will make hackers, gamers, and the communities in general shake their head and think nothing at Sony is changing for the better. As a gamer I'm not going to trust Sony, I'm not going to believe this new guy is any better than the last guy who had a similar resume and qualifications.

Precisely. That is why the chose him. It was a logical choice for Sony. They want someone with the political and law enforcement connections to make "examples" out of targets chosen by Sony in response to future attacks.

Sony should be hiring from within the hacker community.

After the rootkit fiasco and the GeoHot affair, very few in the hacker community would willingly become Judas for thirty pieces of Sony silver.

The fact that they selected this guy shows me they are focused on arresting them and are going to treat it as a low enforcement problem rather than as a technical and cultural problem.

This surprises you? Remember, this is Sony we're talking about here, they're like no other, remember?

This lack of respect for the culture of those who buy the product is the main part of the problem.

I would say that it's a lack of respect for the hacker culture, the people who still buy their products are clueless and have no culture.

This guy is going to be seen as an outsider, a government suit and the hackers are going to attack Sony harder.

That was inevitable. Sony has long since crossed the Rubicon with the hacker community; there's no turning back now.

The executives of Sony said to themselves, "Holy underwear! Sheriff murdered! Innocent women and children blown to bits! We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph! ".

So they went out and got this guy to take the fall for the next time (and there will be a next time) they get hacked.

Now we (well, PSN subscribers anyway) will be subjected to months worth of daily updates - informing us what color of alert we're under.
In all seriousness, maybe this guy actually has the chops to manage (as in not-hands-on running) the network security for Sony. They certainly picked a high-profile suit for the job. And that's the part that worries me. It feels like looks matter more than expertise. Doubtless there are many who are equally, or better, qualified for the job but whose resume's lack marquee value. If I were picking a throat to choke if my network every got boned like that again, I'd be going for the talent and not the name.

One frag, one grope. two frags, two gropes. server blacklists (at last yay !) and many, many mooooreee !!!

"You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harm-o-ny, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement."

They're too big to go down quick but every move is as stupid as their last ignorant move. I don't understand how they got so damn big without any clue at all. This is just what they needed, a DHS guy. He'll fuck with their legitimate customers and piss them off while the guys he's supposedly going to stop from running through Sony's systems just laugh at him. I wonder if Sony will ever wake up.

They already have someone working for their conglomerate who is way more qualified. Not going to name names but you know who you are. This is a public relations appointment and the people who matter aren't impressed. Missed your target Sony. Congratulations, now you're an even bigger one.

If said Mr. Philip R. Reitinger IS actually a frm DHS employee and an "Official" then he can not disclose any information regareding Depatment of Homeland Security or else face charges of Treason punishable by death.

That is just a "snipet" of the Rules.

So, if this Reitinger was "some kind of" an Offical at DHS, then the story does not hold water... FBI and DIS are watching him with the greatest of specifisity.

Rather, this Mr. Reitinger was a "student intern" at DHS then it is clear.

You have to understand that even today, companies in Japan like Sony et al. do not absoultly NOT question the resume of a potential employee... for them its just not proper.

This is why fmr Diet Elected Officials and employess have claimed to have various degrees from University's in North America only to be discovered to be fruads... and worse... when called out and then take NHK "in tow" to UCLA to "discover" no records of enrollment! What a scam. But this IS what they do, time and time again.

People like Reitinger are preditors, knowing that Sony nor any other company IN JAPAN would ever question the validity of their outreagous resumes.

What would I do, if I were the resume examing official of Sony?

I for one would ask Mr. Reitinger out for some drinks at a bar that I know, close to Tokyo Station.

Afterward I would lead him to a back alley near Tokyo Station, very noisy, and kill him without thinking about it or even caring about it and not even feeling any remorse about it. Just Do It. And I do it. He never deserved to live... I'd say. I would not even take what ever small change was in his walet. I check...then laugh. He already hurt too many. Justice served.

I guess I've lived in Japan too long. Doumo arigatou minnasan. This story gives life to me again. I remember who I am. Please give me more stories just like this... more life.

So this brings up an interesting point since it's something I had discussed with a person from the hacking community trying to join ISC2 (@wimremes) and bring more technical aspects to the "Infosec" industry.

As of right now the "Infosec" industry is dominated by corporate and military pencil pushers and not much else. I'm not exactly sure how they got into that field other than the fact that they got direct training from the US Military security practices (this is also a big reason why the Infosec community is very heavily US dominated).

But the core reality is that these people, for all intents and purposes, are not technical in nature and have no idea what they're getting into as far as the civilian "wild wild west" internet mentality.

On the other side of the fence is the far less professional, less formal group of "hackers". These guys aren't really taken seriously by the professional community, but in general are the source of the kinds of things that Lulzsec and Anonymous does.

I know Wim had talked about wanting to try and come up with a solution to help bring both communities together not only at a professional level but a certification level. I'd recommend any ISC2-certified individuals to nominate him so we can try to bridge the gap.